


Eclosion

by trash_devil



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Gore, Messiah!Kazuya - Freeform, being a messiah is not fun, kazuya is having a Rough Time, sprouting wings is not fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 07:53:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16551923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash_devil/pseuds/trash_devil
Summary: It didn’t hurt yet.But it would. Oh, dear God, it would.





	Eclosion

It never got any easier.

Kazuya curled up on the ground. He could feel it, the minute shiftings just below his skin. 

It didn’t hurt yet.

But it would. Oh, dear God, it would.

No sooner than he had finished that thought did his shoulder blades shatter. He could not bite back the scream as the shards of bone tore through his back in macabre spikes of ivory white. With a series of sickening cracks, his spine tried to escape his body, the force jerking him backward. The pieces of his shoulder blades reconnected to form new limbs, their ends still buried beneath his flesh.

And they ripped themselves free.

Kazuya howled his pain into the concrete as the white-hot pain shot through him. His feathers were sticky with blood and tattered strips of skin. His wings shuddered.

He had a moment to breathe before the agony took over again as the second pair began the process of bursting from his back.

His vision went black.

Blind, deafened by his own screams, robbed of all his senses; he was nothing but a vessel for indescribable pain. He gagged and choked on blood, on something else. He felt it filling his lungs.

He felt his bone marrow boiling away, sizzling and popping.

His blood was fire.

His body was agony.

Six sticky wings curled up from the prone form of the Messiah, white feathers stained a deep red. He screamed and screamed and screamed, the horrid sounds echoing all through the city. 

The few Shomonakai left held their ground. By now, they knew that necessary sacrifices had to be made. Their Messiah, mad with agony, reached out his clawed hands.

Still screaming, tears pouring down his face, wings dragging behind him and shredding on the rough pavement, he lurched toward them. His mouth opened wide, wide, wider, splitting his face open to give a brief glimpse of his true form.

That was a mercy. Their hearts had stopped at the sight before they could feel his teeth tear them to pieces.

With the voracity of a starving animal, he shoved their flesh in chunks down his gullet. His fingers claws tentacles talons wrapped around their ribs as he tore them out and forced them into his mouth snout muzzle beak filled with teeth thorns spikes hooks stars. 

He breathed, and he was Kazuya again. He stared down at his blood-covered hands, ran his tongue over his blood-covered teeth. His stomach churned. He turned his head from the tattered remains of the bodies to vomit onto the sidewalk

No one told him that it would be like this.

He dragged himself to his feet and flared his preposterous wings out behind him. He pumped them once, twice, forming miniature whirlwinds with the force, and launched himself into the air.

He felt the cold ripple wash over his body, trying to pull him from the human realm into the domain of Heaven.

And around him the skies rained stones. He caught them on his tongue and trilled out the song of a white thrush. He flew and slithered and ran, on too many limbs or none at all, and-

He shook himself free of Heaven’s grasp and forced himself back down to the human plane. His head throbbed, like his brain was a living creature trying to break free of his skull. Or maybe it had exploded, overfull with thoughts it had not been made to contain. Angel thoughts. Bel thoughts.

The skies opened up, searing his eyes into sightlessness. Heaven would not be denied.

 _why do you run, My child?_ His voice boomed. _why do you continue to pretend at humanity? it is folly._

Kazuya gasped, “Let me, please, just a little longer!”

_I should have known better to trust a human with My favor._

“Please.” He was crying now. He could not stop himself. He careened through blind darkness.

_speak, son of man. give Me a reason._

“Humans want something familiar, someone like them! So I have to-” his voice broke. “I-I…”

_there are sacrifices._

“I know.”

_pain._

“I know.”

_punishment._

“Your judgement is just, Lord.”

Lightning struck him down.

 

Kazuya opened his eyes, and was simply relieved that he could still see at all. His wings were no longer instruments of flight, but a smothering weight of singed flesh and feather, twitching senselessly with leftover electrical impulse.

Not far from where he lay, Naoya watched him with impassive eyes. “Told you so,” he said.

“S’pose you did,” Kazuya laughed. Then coughed. Then spat out sticky red. “Are you sure you wanna be near me? Who knows what could happen?”

 _“'That which harms you shall receive the same sevenfold.'_ I’m not worried.”

He smiled. “You’re doing well.”

“I’m afraid that the same can’t be said of you.”

Kazuya laughed again. It was more of a spasm in his chest than an actual laugh, but still. “Worth it.”

His expression softened. He approached the fallen Messiah, sleeve held over his mouth and nose to filter the ash out of the air he breathed. “Is it, though?”

“I can’t doubt now. I wouldn’t be able to face it,” he said. He shuddered when Naoya nudged one wing aside with his foot.

“Eternity is a high price to pay.”

“As if there’s any price I wouldn’t pay for you,” he replied. He didn’t know if it was an expression of necessity, of desperation, of love, of anything at all.

Naoya shook his head. “You’re still my little brother.” He knelt down and wiped some of the blood away from Kazuya’s face. “...I didn’t want you to suffer.”

 _But you did kill me._ The words hung unspoken in the air. Kazuya did not give them voice. Brutal as it was, the first murder had been quick. Abel had not suffered much.

At least not by Cain’s hand. What happened after that, when he was cast into the hands of God, well… That was a different story.

“Humans always want someone else to make the sacrifice. It’s just the same as if I was anyone else.”

“No, it’s not.” Naoya sighed. He gave up on trying to clean him; no matter how much blood and soot he scrubbed away, there was always more. 

Kazuya heaved himself upright, staggering on weak legs. Naoya held out an arm to steady him.

Through the tears in his clothing, Naoya could see the scars that coated his flesh. As long as humanity sinned, their Messiah would continue to suffer in their place.

It was disgusting, it was unfair, but no matter how much Naoya wanted to rage at the heavens for this injustice, he refused to add to Kazuya’s pain. His revenge wasn’t worth this.

Kazuya managed another smile, and only winced a little bit when he stretched out his wings. “See you later, Naoya. … I hope.”

“You will,” Naoya reassured him.

Like Kazuya had said, they could no longer doubt. If he doubted, perhaps it would be enough to make whatever it was God planted inside of him to burst from the pupa of his body. 

Enough to free whatever it was those wings belonged to.


End file.
